I have my Father’s eyes, the exact color and shape, but I also have his perception that tangled around the blue heart center of his view. I have my Father’s mouth, plump lips that came with the nervous habit of biting them until they bleed, and the split personality of his tongue that could make you feel like everything or nothing. I have a fraction of his temper that was a surprise hidden his throat, but the kind of surprise you ever forget. I have my Father’s heart, I wear it the way he did, on my sleeve, in my eyes, almost always in someone else’s hands. I have my Father’s sense of humor with the ability to turn pain into laughter to cover my wounds. I have my Father forever, for in the mirror, I am his spitting image, and these traits I have carried for two years longer than him.
-Stephanie Bennett-Henry